PocketMatrix

I hereby put PocketHAL to the test.

Is this forum dead, or not? Kzinti, you are clearly Thierry, and we've not heard from you for a good while.

You have made some incredible achievements here in your time making fast framebuffer access achievable on PDA devices, your mark is recognised, for many years (since 2002 I believe). Seeing your post rate at 1.62 over this time period demonstrated your sheer commitment to supporting a growing community, so credit to you.

However, devices constantly change, and there have been a number of posts which reflect that PocketHAL is not keeping up.

Notably
* VGA Square (480x480) crashes

Also, you have yourself commented that you ought to spend more time back on this project, but that's usually as far as you go.

This reinforces my belief that you are not looking after this community any more, intentionally or otherwise.

Perhaps your allegiance and/or motives have changed - great, this is fine, but please recognise that many developers have become dependent on your library as a free source for game development upon a blazing fast HAL library. Now, I ask you to explain what the future should be here.

If you are stopping work on this library, for whatever reason, I believe you should at least state this. I've PM'd you recently, and you don't answer. People looking to donate will have zero confidence in doing so (and I recommend you don't until we hear an answer).

Please choose, you either support and contact, or Escrow and release the source, or you tell everyone to solve their own problems as they are now on their own.

And before anyone flames me for this, I've taken precautious and sensitive steps over the past few weeks to allow plenty of time for response.

On a side-note, I personally have spent 3 years developing a GUI library on top of PocketHAL / PocketFrog. I might be willing to release this as open-source, if it will re-ignite an enthusiasm in this great setup. If anyone is interested, let me know. If Kzinti is interested, let me know.

ml

I would definitely be interested in your GUI library, and I am also very curious as to the answers for the questions posed in this thread. I have spent the past 2 1/2 years helping ArianeSoft refine PPL, whose core game components are based off of PocketFrog / PocketHAL. I'd hate to see the library fizzle, as it is in my opinion one of the greatest strengths of PPL. I hope your "doom & gloom" is for naught.

I also hope your doom and gloom is for naught. I use PF for all of my games and have a lot of respect and appreciation for Thierry for creating it for us. He never had to do that.

But I also agree that it would be nice to hear Thierry's thoughts for PHAL. There haven't been very many innovations in PPCs lately, but I hope that changes with WM6 coming out soon. I don't think there are currently any 480x480 devices out yet either, but there will be for WM6, as well as 320x320.

http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsmobile/arc ... sited.aspx

-John

I donated last week and got a reply (including the registered version) just a few days later.

While I wish that Thierry would still be more active in this group, I understand that his focus has shifted.

Still, my experience is that whenever there is a problem reported it was fixed soon. Isn't that true?

Daniel

Maybe he's been paid off by the Edge library guys

It was good while it lasted and I'd like to thank Thierry for making it possible for me to easily write Pocket PC games. I'll carry on using PF and PH until I hit an insurmountable obstacle, hopefully that won't be for a long while.

I will investigate the orientation issues shortly.